It all started as any good boy meets girl story does...playing Dungeons and Dragons In early 2021, my brother Ian introduced me to Dungeons & Dragons and I fell in love with it quickly. One day on the Meetup app, I found a local D&D one-shot night at a bar called Joystick (the ATL folks know this bar is a staple/classic Atlanta). At the same time, Evan's best friend, and now Best Man, Max, decided to move to Atlanta (iykyk). The very next day after he arrived in town from Houston, Evan also heard about a D&D one-shot meetup at a bar called Joystick. Picture it: a tiny bar on a Monday night in late-August, a bunch of people new to town in desperate need for friends (it's 2021 after all) find a table with a few other meetup newbies. The gang exchanged numbers and created a groupchat. Evan, the social butterfly that he is, invited us all to join a D&D campaign he wants to run. The gang spent the next few months getting together weekly to play in Evan and Max's "murder basement", going out to neighborhood bars and events, even creating Among Us Halloween Costumes. As time went on, we developed quite obvious crushes on one another. Ask Max for more details -- he's strongly opinionated about the weeks leading up to our first date! Evan asked me out the day before Thanksgiving 2021, and I invited him over to set up my Christmas tree with me when I got home from the holiday. This was our first date, and has now become an anniversary tradition for us. Evan and I moved in together in Summer 2022, got a cat in March 2023 (which Michele still regrets to this day), traveled to Punta Cana, Canada, Colorado, North Georgia, and all over to see our families and friends. When deciding on our 2025 annual trip, we figured we might as well go to Savannah. We'd lived in Georgia this long -- how have we not been there yet...

We went to Savannah in September 2025 and had a luxurious and relaxing vacation. The best part however, was on the second to last day. Michele's Perspective: We’d looked at rings over the summer. But surely I’d know if he was going to propose on this trip, right? Considering my girlfriends didn’t take me to get my nails done, I was fairly certain it wouldn’t be happening this weekend. So, on a lazy Sunday while Evan was napping, I was laying poolside. I figured I should go upstairs and throw on some clothes for dinner. We were planning to see as many rooftop bars as possible that night! It’s important to note here that 6 months prior, Evan and I accidentally bought matching lemon-pattern outfits at Abercrombie, but I’d never had the courage to wear them out together. We figured it’s the perfect night for matching outfits! We got dressed, headed out to our first bar, and Evan suggested we go take a photo by the river. For context, Evan NEVER wants to take photos. Proceeding, thinking nothing of it, we took a couple cute photos. I go to take my phone back from the kind stranger and Evan says “oh let’s do one more” as he gets down on one knee. It was such a blur of excitement all I remember is blurting “of course”! A kind couple who saw us offered to buy us champagne, which we gladly accepted. As I went to take a photo with my ring and champagne, Evan whipped out a pack of press-on nails! Ah, but no nail glue. That’s ok! Some kind girls at the bar somehow all had nail glue in their purses. They had to do my nails while I was shaking with excitement. Evan's Perspective: Getting the ring was the easy part. We “looked at rings over the summer” which is code for I had a strict set of instructions of the ring Michele wanted. I’m not complaining, after all, knowing that Michele was going to love the ring (that she designed) felt like the best way to start marriage off on the right foot. Dan, the jeweler who made the ring, was kind enough to give me some pointers on how the proposal should go so that I would be good to go on the day. I chose our trip to Savannah as the time to propose because I knew that we were going to be on the water, which is a plus for Michele at all times, and I wanted it to be in a place where we could make new memories, rather than somewhere that was already important to us. It would be a great way to start the next chapter of our story. I wanted the entire thing to feel like a surprise, and not telegraphed too much. Otherwise, I think it would have felt like a box I was checking rather than a special moment we could look back on. So I told no one beforehand. Except Dan, but he gave me the ring and I’m sure he could put 2 and 2 together. Once we got to Savannah, I looked up the weather, found out when sunset would be, and called her parents for her hand in marriage (in hindsight, I would’ve rather done this in person, but I am not a planner). Equipped for success, I told Michele that we should get some pictures on the water while we walked to dinner and got down on one knee. Nerves got the best of me and not a damn thought was in my head. Dan’s instructions: gone. The few lines I put together in my head for this moment: gone. I pull out the ring, say something about love, and proceed to put the ring on the wrong hand (watch the video, I think it came off endearing). But the nerves died down the second she said yes. We stood there, arms wrapped around each other in the light of the sunset, and I was overjoyed that forever started for us right then and there.